Slackware 10.2 release notes. Tue Sep 13 11:22:24 PDT 2005
Hi folks,
Here we go with another release of Slackware! As usual, there are
a few things that merit special mention so that they won't be traps
for the unprepared.
This version of Slackware contains a new glibc built with NPTL
(Native POSIX Thread Library) and TLS (Thread Local Storage) support.
There's a lot more information about that in the README.NPTL file.
If you're using a 2.6 kernel that supports NPTL, you'll get a lot
better performance out of any software that uses threads. In general
there will be no need to recompile anything to get this boost;
anything that links to the pthread library will use the NPTL version
of glibc in /lib/tls if the kernel can support it. The new glibc
requires a TLS capable version of ldconfig, and a side-effect of that
is that if you try to upgrade the glibc packages on a mounted
filesystem using installpkg's ROOT= flag, it's not going to work
properly unless the machine you are running from has a TLS capable
ldconfig. So, if you want to do that, either upgrade your own glibc
packages first, or chroot to the mounted partition and then upgrade
the packages there. Most people won't have to worry about this --
it only affects upgrades done with the ROOT=/someplace flag, not
installs from the CD or upgrades done according to the UPGRADE.TXT
instructions.
As you can see, Slackware 10.2 is still using a 2.4 kernel (2.4.31)
for the default system kernel. The 2.4.31 kernel has been rock-
solid here, and it seemed best to put out one more 2.4 based 10.x
release of Slackware before heading full-force into 2.6 territory
because a lot of people are going to want to be running the 2.4
kernel on production machines for a long time to come, and some of
the changes to the system that will be needed to fully embrace all
of 2.6's features aren't necessarily 2.4 kernel-friendly. The next
version of Slackware will focus on the 2.6 kernel.
The 2.6 kernel series shows a great deal of promise, but it's
still undergoing heavy development and the stability of any given
release can be hit-or-miss. Things are improving rapidly in that
regard though, and Greg Kroah-Hartman, Chris Wright, and some other
folks have been helping by producing stable branches (2.6.x.y)
after each new major release of a 2.6.x kernel. Anyway, since
there is hardware out there that requires a 2.6 kernel in order to
install, this release of Slackware does have a 2.6.13 kernel that's
integrated into the installer. To install using it, enter test26.s
at the boot prompt after booting the first disc. This kernel has
compiled-in support for essentially all of the hard drive
controllers and filesystems that are supported by the 2.6.13
kernel, and should be helpful for people with new SATA controllers
or other hardware that 2.4.31 doesn't support. This kernel doesn't
have any built in network support and is primarily intended for
installing from local media (although if you were to toss a few
2.6.13 modules on a floppy disk and load them from there it should
work). Also, the kernel module packages for 2.6.13 are not part
of the standard installation, so if you install using the test26.s
kernel you'll have to install those packages when you're done.
They can be found under testing/packages/linux-2.6.13/ (or ISO
number two under /linux-2.6.13), the alsa-driver and
kernel-modules packages. You might also consider installing the
other packages there and building an initrd according to the
instructions in README.initrd if you'd like to be running a slimmer
kernel without a lot of unneeded drivers taking up RAM, or better
yet, visit ftp.kernel.org in /pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ and grab the
latest version of the 2.6 kernel to build your own. It'll
probably have some important fixes.
As of this release, the GNOME desktop is no longer shipped as a
part of Slackware, and continued maintenance of GNOME for
Slackware has been adopted by a couple of outside projects:
http://gsb.sf.net
http://gware.sf.net
If you're looking for a GNOME distribution for Slackware, I can
recommend either of these as being extremely well built and more
comprehensive than any GNOME series that was previously included.
If you're a GNOME fan, check them out. I think you'll be pleased.
The network setup script /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 has been extensively
rewritten and supports many new options in rc.inet1.conf. Thanks to
Eric Hameleers for doing some great work with this, rc.wireless, and
other parts of the networking setup. See the comments in
rc.inet1.conf for information about the new options. One that
didn't get listed yet that I'll mention here is support for IP
aliasing. This sort of thing will work now: IFNAME[2]="eth0:1"
Well, that about covers the major changes. A couple of non-technical
things that people might be interested in... folks are asking how I'm
doing these days. I'm doing much better, thanks. I'm also getting
asked just what it was that got me last fall. Well, the docs found
H. Flu in a culture, so that's the best guess. Also, I'm writing to
you from my new data center in the high-tech rural anti-metropolis of
Sebeka, Minnesota (really, I'm not kidding!), which is why I was
missing online for a little while last month. I'm not missing the
California traffic one bit.
Have fun! :-)
Pat Volkerding